There is Only North

A being older than time awakens...

For longer than memory, I have walked north.

Empires have risen around my passing and turned to dust before I returned again. Rivers altered course. Seas swallowed roads and temples. Civilizations remade themselves so completely that sons no longer recognized the gods of their fathers.

Perhaps that is why they no longer worship me. Though, I am no god. Gods, too, rise and fall, change shape and take new names.

I alone remain unchanged.

When the birch forests whiten and the marsh reeds dry to brittle gold, I awake and continue the journey. I rose from the black water beneath the marsh as the first frost silvered the reeds. Mud clung to the shape I wore, reluctant to release me back into the world. The hollow within my head opened slowly to the cold air. The forest fell deafeningly silent.

Animals always know me first.

I gathered reeds until my body disappeared beneath them. Long ago, I wore robes stitched from animal hide. Later, I donned armor hammered from dark iron. Once, I carved faces for myself from antlers and bone so humans would not recoil at the sight of me. Now, the reeds will do for what must be done.

By nightfall I crossed the edge of the village.

Their grandmothers still muttered warnings about the marsh after sunset. Small charms woven from grass still hung above a few doorways without anyone remembering why. Memory weakens with each generation, but terror preserves what history cannot.

I laid bundles of reeds on several thresholds before dawn.

Invitations.

Preparations.

Most humans cannot withstand my presence directly. Their thoughts fracture. Their bodies revolt against instincts too ancient to understand. Yet every generation produces a few capable of hearing the call clearly enough to follow it.

The woman called Marta was one of them.

I first saw her standing behind her house, feeding armfuls of reeds into a fire. Sparks rose around her while the birch trees watched silently beyond the fields. She believed destruction could interrupt what had already begun.

That night I stood outside her window while she slept. I did not enter immediately. Dreams are delicate places, and too much of me leaves damage behind. Blood from the ears. Broken minds. Hearts stopped suddenly in the dark.

When I finally touched her thoughts, she saw me at once.

A tall figure woven from reeds and root fibers, standing motionless among the dead grass. Where my face should have been there was only the hollow, deep and black and endless. Humans always focus on the hollow. They believe emptiness frightens them most, though it is recognition they truly fear.

She woke with her hands pressed over her mouth.

The room was freezing. Moonlight stretched across the floorboards toward the window, where several dead reeds lay in careful parallel lines.

Marta stared at them for a long time before gathering them quietly into her hands and began weaving them over and under and together.

Over the following days the village unraveled predictably. Livestock vanished from their pens after wandering willingly into the marsh. Children woke crying from dreams of pale trees stretching endlessly northward. Several villagers claimed they heard footsteps circling their homes at night, though I rarely walked near them at all. Fear invents sounds eagerly.

One man came to me quickly.

Luka.

Some humans contain fractures long before I arrive. Grief, loneliness, despair—these open paths inside them. He followed me into the birch forest after seeing only a glimpse of my shape between the trunks. By dawn he had begun weaving reeds together with trembling devotion.

When the others found his attic, they called it madness.

Dozens of small reed figures hung from the rafters, faceless and waiting. Across the walls he had scratched the same phrase repeatedly until his fingers split open.

SHE IS ALMOST READY

Not she.

The road.

But human language has always struggled with precision.

The road cannot truly be described. Something waits far north beyond the forests and frozen marshes. Something ancient enough that even I feel small in its presence. Whether I serve it willingly or merely obey instincts carved into me, I no longer know.

I only know the journey must continue.

The villagers finally found me three days later.

I stood waiting in a clearing while thin snow drifted through the birch branches overhead. They approached carrying rifles, lanterns, knives, symbols of the fragile belief humans use to convince themselves the dark can be controlled.

Several froze immediately. One woman began praying. Another dropped his lantern into the snow without noticing.

Marta stared longest. She looked directly into the hollow where my face should have been and understood, at least partly, that I was older than anything she could name. She did not flinch or look away.

Marta—brave Marta—broke from my gaze. She called to those around her, compelled them to follow her back to their homes. She dragged one woman toward the village and soon the other followed behind her. Resistance changes nothing, but humans require the attempt. It grants dignity to inevitability.

By the final morning, winter had fully arrived.

Snow covered the marsh in pale silence. I waited at the edge of the birch forest while Marta prepared herself inside her father’s house. I watched her pack food, lantern oil, thick clothing, and a knife small enough to comfort rather than protect.

I turned northward and began walking.

Some followed immediately.

They always do.

Not because I compel them, but because something ancient inside them recognizes the movement. Birds migrate. Rivers seek the sea. Humans, despite all their illusions of freedom, still carry instincts buried deep within the marrow of their bones.

When she finally approached me, fear moved within Marta like another heartbeat.

“Where are you taking us?” she asked softly.

I did not answer her.

The answer did not matter. .

Instead, I turned toward the endless white trees and began walking north once more, listening to her footsteps follow behind me as the journey began again.

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This story is a combination of two prompts:

• Sunday Scaries hosted by Conor MacCormack, Labyrinthia Mythweaver, and Mathew C. Bryant • Horror Poet .

• Day 6 of Bradley Ramsey’s Halls of Pandemonium writing challenge. Read the other stories here!

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